Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

  I wonder if you could have a conservative conspiracy theorist that is actually pro-women’s rights. I’ve never run across one. All conspiracy theorists that I have read, have viewed any progress on women’s rights as being part of the conspiracy. Webster, a woman, is no different. The Illuminati, we must remember, was about as progressive on women’s issues as one could get in 1776. They attempted to educate women and include them in their organization. They would not be on par with the male members but for a club of this kind to include women at all is a positive step, of course Webster is going to have a problem with this. Our selection this week begins with her attack on “Feminism.” This book is going to be published in 1921, which means that Webster was working on it for at least a year. Keep this in mind because it was not until 1918 that women were given the right to vote in the UK—provided that they were over the age of 30 and owned property through marriage. This, as a s...

  Towards the end of the Robison book that is the origin story for this conspiracy theory, Robison began complaining about a German reading society. For Robison the Illuminati thing had run its course and it was difficult for him to pretend that that an organization that lasted just over a decade was secretly in charge. He sought a new enemy, someone was running continental Masonry, and he jumped from place to place and target to target. The German Reading Societies were his final target. These societies were going to do two things: the first began publishing as many books as cheaply as possible. The second was that they were going to establish a system within the German speaking states so that a person in Berlin could request a book from a library in Bavaria and have it delivered to them. This was a problem, but Robison never explains why this is an issue. Webster tells us what the problem is: they’ll be reading unapproved books, “ Not only have the moden Illuminati succeeded in...

 We are beginning to wrap this book up with our final chapter “Conclusion.” I really want to be petty about the title, but I won’t be. Conclusions in books are supposed to be recap, but conclusions in conspiracy theory books are usually not. Usually, they do a slight bit of recapping and then infodump. We also have a problem of time. This book is a little over a century old and some conventions in historical writing may have changed. She begins by telling us that that many “things that are happening today which appear at first inexplicable become clear as daylight; for not only do the six points of Weishaupt form the exact programme of the revolutionary party in England, but it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that every device now employed by it can be traced back to the code of the Illuminati.” What a modern book would do is just drop a quick footnote as to where the “six points of Weishaupt” were discussed. It should read “Six points of Weishaupt (ch. 2).” I mention this...

  In Gary Allen’s “None Dare Call It Conspiracy” he explains that if you ask the average person what Communism is, they’ll give some answer about Russia. If they’re an academic, they’ll probably talk about the differences between Socialism, Marxism, and Communism. None of those, according to him, are correct, because Communism is something else. His view, and that of the John Birch Society as well as the current presidential administration is that COMMUNISM (Allen does all caps for this) is just a word for whatever they don’t like. Usually this is anything that is progressive or liberal. Increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy an extra 1%? COMMUNISM! Make law enforcement accountable for their actions? COMMUNISM! Etc. It’s all very stupid because the word has no meaning. What I didn’t know when I covered Gary Allen’s book was that he blatantly stole this framing from Webster, “ In the same way the word ‘Communism’ has a double meaning.” She goes on to explain that the average person...

  It is a good thing that this book is wrapping up because Webster is all over the place now. Last week I hypothesized that Webster was beginning to end this book when someone handed her an English copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which had just been published in England. She had to work extra hard to write that forgery into her book while at the same time discrediting it because she’s so racist against Germans that it actually overrides her anti-Semitism. Perhaps 1918 was just a different time. An important thing to remember about this time is that racism isn’t just about skin color. That aspect of racism still exists but there is also the racism against ethnic groups as well. When Webster attacks Germans, it’s racist—it’s just not what we are used to. Webster hates anyone that isn’t Anglo, Napoleanic French, or Bakunin specifically. Her book has to do the conspiracy theory move of making us afraid of the imminent future, so she has to look at the most immediate past....

Last week we glossed over the long period where Webster compared selections of the Protocols to selections of whatever she could use to show that the world revolution was being controlled by a single entity. She failed in this, but the point was to never create a case—this far in the book, you are buying her story. Her intended audience is not going to fact check her assertions about the other books. She’s been handed a gift in the form of an English translation of the Protocols which not only justifies her anti-Semitism but also her conspiracy. Because the Protocols are too good of evidence she questions their authenticity. This is a good move, a surprising one for her, but I would give her credit if I didn’t suspect that it was disingenuous. A little background for any new readers. This book was published in 1921. The first English version of the Protocols was published in Britian in 1920. While she’s writing this book, the Protocols are going to hit the shops. It had been widely c...